Families place trust in Arizona nursing homes when an elderly loved one requires around-the-clock care that exceeds what family members can safely provide. While many facilities advertise attentive, skilled care, the reality is that nursing homes are often understaffed and rely on overworked or undertrained caregivers. When staff fail to properly monitor residents or respond to injuries, the consequences can be deadly.
Elderly residents frequently suffer from communication barriers caused by dementia, aphasia, stroke, or cognitive decline, making it difficult or impossible to report pain or injury. Despite these limitations, nursing homes have a legal duty to recognize signs of serious injury, including fractures, and to ensure residents receive immediate medical evaluation and treatment. Failing to do so can result in catastrophic complications, including death.
In many cases, untreated fractures are a direct result of nursing home negligence, leaving families to seek answers and accountability through an experienced Phoenix nursing home abuse lawyer.
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Fatal Complications From Untreated Fractures In Arizona Nursing Homes
What Types of Fractures are Common In Arizona Nursing Homes?
The elderly are far more susceptible to bone fractures than younger individuals due to age-related conditions such as osteoporosis, which causes decreased bone density. One Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study indicates that 10.2 million Americans over age 50 have osteoporosis. In addition, medically fragile elderly nursing home residents often have limited mobility or are immobile, leading to further loss of bone mass, which occurs when weight-bearing bones are no longer in use.
The most common types of fractures in nursing homes include the following:
- Hip fractures
- Spinal fractures
- Fractures to wrists and forearms (caused when an elderly person tries to break a fall)
- Pelvic fractures
- Leg fractures of the femur or tibia
- Hand and arm fractures
Fractures in nursing homes primarily result from falls. Less commonly, Arizona nursing home residents suffer broken bones due to nursing home abuse from caregivers or from resident-on-resident violence.
How Do Fractures Happen In Nursing Homes?
The elderly often have multiple co-morbidities and mobility problems. Weakness, illness, balance problems, and medications increase the risk of dangerous falls and fractures in nursing home residents. Falls occur due to a lack of supervision, insufficient assistance during transfers from bed to chair, and inadequate or malfunctioning assistive mobility equipment.
Falls, abuse, violence, and other causes of nursing home fractures are entirely preventable when well-trained, experienced nursing home caregivers provide adequate care and supervision.
What Types of Complications Happen From Untreated Fractures In Arizona Nursing Homes?
Fractures require prompt emergency medical care. Unfortunately, caregivers sometimes fail to identify fractures or to provide a prompt medical examination, diagnosis, and treatment. When a bone fracture doesn’t receive medical treatment, the result can be the following ill effects:
- Physical and cognitive decline due to extreme pain
- Infection and deadly sepsis
- Blood clots and pulmonary embolism
- Hemorrhage and subdural hematomas
- Pneumonia from decreased mobility
- Compartment syndrome, which is extreme pressure from inflammation, resulting in cell death, tissue necrosis. Compartment syndrome can be fatal without prompt emergency treatment, often requiring amputation
When an untreated fracture causes the death of a nursing home resident in Arizona, the family has the right to file a wrongful death claim against the negligent facility. While a wrongful death claim does not return a lost loved one or erase the suffering they experienced before their death, it does provide a sense of justice to loved ones for the loss of their family member.